In Japan, a country facing a shortage of sand, an essential component of concrete and mortar, diapers are now being explored as an alternative material for building houses.
A fascinating recent study highlights how processed used diapers can effectively replace sand in the production of concrete and mortar. Remarkably, the findings suggest that in the future, a small single-story house could potentially have up to 8% of its sand content substituted with processed diapers. Even more impressive, the researchers have devised a method that achieves this replacement without compromising the structural integrity of the construction.
From Interesting Engineering:
This process, the authors believe, could be used as an innovative way to help build low-cost housing in various parts of the world. It could also help dramatically reduce the amount of used diapers sent to landfill sites or burnt by making them a potentially valuable resource. This is significant, as it is currently estimated that millions of tons are thrown away each year.
But how is this possible? Well, disposable diapers are manufactured from wood pulp, cotton, viscose rayon, and plastics such as polyester, polyethylene, and polypropylene. With a bit of processing, like cleaning away baby poop, used diapers can readily replace sand with little effort.
To make the new concrete and mortar, Siswanti Zuraida and her team used a combination of washing, drying, and shredding disposable diaper waste, cement, sand, gravel, and water. The samples were left to cure for 28 days, and the team tested six samples with varying proportions of diaper waste to determine their resistance to pressure. Based on their findings, they calculated the maximum amount of sand that could be replaced with disposable diapers in building materials used in constructing an Indonesian-standard 388 ft2 (36-square-meter) house.
Well, thank goodness they're cleaning away the baby poop before mixing it into the walls of the house.
This is definitely a creative solution, although personally, I couldn't stop thinking about how my house was made of diapers.
